4 min readUpdated: Jun 5, 2026 03:34 PM IST
Bandar movie review: Not all men. Or all men. Anurag Kashyap’s Bandar, co-written by Sudip Sharma and Abhishek Banerjee, places the viewer in a quandary: whom do you believe, a washed-out entertainer, refusing to understand the depth of his male privilege, claiming he’s innocent, or the woman, who claims that she is the victim of rape?
This is a difficult theme to sit with. Given that the real-life figures of Me-Too accused in the Indian film industry, called out when the movement was at its peak in 2018, are now almost all rehabilitated, and that the women who do find the courage to come forward, find themselves ostracised and out of work, the central focus of Bandar forces viewers into examining their moral and ethical boundaries. As I’m sure it’s meant to do.
I found myself conflicted through much of the film, swinging between feelings of empathy and rage. On the one hand is the male protagonist who is flung into the slammer, there to be systematically debased by the horrors of prison: inhumanly overcrowded cells, filthy latrines, menacing inmates, threats of physical violation, and constant use of gutter language. On the other is the needy, fragile woman, desperately seeking connection, cast aside by the self-same man after a casual, if consensual one night-stand, which he callously claims was ‘abortive’ because she doesn’t play into one of his fantasies.
Also Read – Hai Jawani Toh Ishq Hona Hai movie review: David Dhawan’s 90s-style comedy is plain cringe
Bobby Deol, in a career-defining performance, plays Samar Malhotra, not so much as an entitled jerk who once was a big noise in the entertainment industry – he doesn’t want to do TV which he finds limiting, only movies – but as a man who can swipe right, and then be careless of the consequences of that action.
The rest of the cast does exactly what the film needs: Sapna Pabbi as the woman who puts Samar into the dock, Sanya Malhotra as Samar’s initially supportive but increasingly frustrated sister, Riddhi Sen as the hard-working lawyer, and Saba Azad as Samar’s love interest, are all good.
I wished that the film worked through more of the discomfort it conjures up while challenging ingrained gender-dynamics. When it sticks to that lane, it is at its best: a female cop cringing at a condom in Samar’s wallet, and the hard-core stuff he watches on his cell-phone–’doms and young girls’; a girl-friend writing a letter as a confession to her own discomfort at his situation; and Samar himself not being a paragon of virtue.
Story continues below this ad
And then Bandar turns into a dark prison drama (with impactful acts from Indrajith Sukumaran, Sukant Goel, Raj B Shetty, Natesh Hegde) and while it is successful at showing the degradation of Samar, it also clearly elicits sympathy for the man going through an ordeal he never signed up for. This is where the film shows where its own sympathies lie, for all its wanting to rock the boat. Did Samar, that monkey in a cage, really need that out, which can well be read as a cop-out?
Having said that, and while I continue to be conflicted, this is also Kashyap’s strongest film in a while, its spare, scrappy style working in tandem with the story (based apparently on a real-life case) which chooses to show us a man who may not be as black as he’s painted out to be, but is not all white either. And while it does come off as a gimmick, perhaps the climactic act of the flawed ‘hero’ breaking the third wall could refresh the much-needed conversation around Me-Too, which has been tamped down by powerful men, and powerless women.
Bandar movie cast: Bobby Deol, Sanya Malhotra, Saba Azad, Sapna Pabbi, Jitendra Joshi, Riddhi Sen, Indrajith Sukumaran, Raj B Shetty, Natesh Hegde, Sukant Goel
Bandar movie director: Anurag Kashyap
Bandar move rating: Three stars
Bandar movie review: Bobby Deol shines in Anurag Kashyap's MeToo drama.